


a threat that is also a promise

by nonisland



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Competent Arthur (Merlin), Curses, Don't Try This At Home, Episode: s02e09 Lady of the Lake, Episode: s05e13 The Diamond of the Day, Execution, Gen, unlikely friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 18:18:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17288993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: It would have been easy to be angry at Arthur for having killed her. Freya has never done the easy thing.





	a threat that is also a promise

**Author's Note:**

> *blows dust off AO3 account* This was the last part of a five-times story I started either for or as an exercise while participating in [Untold Legends](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Untold_Legends) back in, yikes, 2014—five ways Arthur and Freya never met, and the way they did—which at this point I recognize I'm never going to finish, and none of the AUs of which are themselves complete. But the canon-compliant bit _is_ complete, and I still like it (especially the bit that goes with "The Lady of the Lake"), and I think it stands well enough on its own to be posted.
> 
> Title from [A Softer World](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=743).
> 
> **Content notes:** This is absolutely a fic about a relationship between two people one of whom killed the other in self-defense and the other of whom considers that justified. There is also mention, though not detailed depiction, of the mind-control aspect of Freya's curse.

* * *

**(the one where Arthur is the prince of Camelot and Freya is a cursed druid girl)**

* * *

This is the thing at the heart of all of it:

Merlin lies.

He’s a bad liar, and he does it out of loyalty and love more often than not, and Arthur has nearly always known—Merlin lies.

Merlin knows where the druid girl is. Merlin probably let her go in the first place, and looking at Halig Arthur is almost tempted to side with Merlin. Almost, not quite, because even the druids were afraid of the girl, and that means she’s a danger to Camelot, and _that_ means that Arthur cannot let her go free any more than he can turn her over to Halig again.

When something starts killing people, he knows for sure. The girl is free, and dangerous, and if Merlin can’t save her she _must_ be stopped.

He and his father and Gaius gather to study the signs of the latest threat to Camelot. Arthur says “Human footprints” and it’s barely half a truth. His father, distracted by the thought of magic, doesn’t ask, and Gaius, incredibly ignorant about hunting and woodcraft, doesn’t think to. Arthur looks at the footprints while they talk, and thinks: probably a full head shorter than he is, by the length; eight stone, if that, by the depth; a grown woman instead of a boy, by the shape. Slight and small and delicate, pretty or pitiful—or both—enough that Merlin in all his raw innocence trusts her unthinkingly. Able to kill effortlessly and leave no tracks behind.

_Cursed_ , Halig had said the druids had told him. Arthur wishes it could matter to him whether or not the girl meant her murders, but it can’t. These are his people she’s slaughtering.

For a few days he hopes that Merlin will do something, find one of the last-minute solutions he’s so good at, especially unhampered by Arthur’s presence, but although every night the patrols find nothing every morning there are more dead.

And then they do find her. For a few heartbeats he sees her as Merlin must have, lovely and terrified and strong beyond belief, until her will fails and a creature out of nightmare hurls itself at them.

He kills her, and regrets it, even before Merlin vanishes and finally comes back quiet and lost. He kills her, and it’s a very long time before he sees her again.

* * *

**(the one where Freya is the Lady of the Lake, and Arthur was the king of Camelot)**

* * *

It would have been easy to be angry at Arthur for having killed her. Freya has never done the easy thing.

She _understands_ , and that’s what rips the anger cleanly out of her. She who never deserved any of what was done to her as punishment for an act of self-defense cannot blame Arthur Pendragon for the same. She would have killed him, and all his knights, and all the innocent people of Camelot; she couldn’t stop herself. She had tried. He had killed her first.

She watches Camelot from Avalon. Arthur has potential, Arthur _could_ become the king Merlin so clearly believes he might, and Freya finds that she badly wants him to as well.

(But Uther had potential, too. She never knew him then, but she knows; she measures the height of the greatness that might have been his legacy by the depth of the terror that will be.)

Arthur…Arthur is not perfect, which is bitter. Freya arms him anyway, hopes for him anyway.

He could, she finds, be a worse king. What hurts is that he could also have been better, could have been brighter, could have…there are a lot of things he could have done. If he had welcomed magic she would have brought Avalon to meet him; Merlin could have been a bridge, a conduit, everything she can see he was made for—Merlin who wields magic as easily as he breathes could have carried Avalon’s heart to beat again in Albion, if Arthur would only have welcomed it. It would have been glorious. Freya is no seer, but even she can see what would have been. _Should_ have been.

But Arthur settles into his role like any other man who happens to be the son of a king, instead, and finds work and friendship and love like any other man, and is happy, and maybe happiness is all he’d wanted. The golden overlay of the king he could have been—a king who would grow to godlike proportion in legend—shimmers and fades into him, and he is just King Arthur of Camelot.

She is still stunned when he dies.

Camelot is steady in Gwen’s hands. Freya turns away from it for the last time and waits.

It isn’t long before Merlin brings Arthur to her, and even less time before Arthur comes the rest of the way between worlds himself, alone in a way that she thinks he hasn’t been in years.

_Soon_ , she promises Merlin, but he can’t hear her, isn’t listening anyway. Has, maybe, forgotten everything but pain. She means it, though; she _won’t_ leave him out there alone.

Arthur washes up on the shores of Avalon and Freya expects confusion, or maybe anger, but he’s quicker than she’d thought. “This is the afterlife,” he says, carefully, testing the words as he says them.

“An afterlife.”

She expects a _Who are you?_ next. Instead his gaze sharpens, taking her in from wind-tangled hair to bare feet. “I know you,” he says. “You’re—” His eyes widen suddenly in recognition and dismay. “You’re the druid girl Merlin tried to save. I killed you.”

“Merlin _did_ save me,” Freya says.

Arthur gulps. Nods. A little of the shock fades out of his face. He probably has the story wrong inside his head now, but she can correct him later.

“My name is Freya.” She holds out a hand.

He looks at her in surprise for a long moment, then takes it.


End file.
